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LESSING'S EDUCATION OF THE
HUMAN RACE

JOHN DEARLING HANEY. Ph.D.

PUBLISHED BY

Q^rart^rrfl OHolUgr. OJolumbia HniveraitiT

NEW YORK CITY
in 13

LESSING'S EDUCATION OF THE
HUMAN RACE

JOHN DEARLING HANEY, M.A., LL.B.

\'
Principal P. S. 5 Bronx

New York City

Published by

TEACHERS COLLEGE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

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' PREFACE

Lessing's tractate. The Education of the Human Race, is an
account of how the world received and is still receiving reve-
lation that is to prepare man for the attainment of the best that
is in him. This involves the notion of a racial education and
a conception of the inter-dependence of all social phenomena
— the unity of man with nature and the correlation of moral
and political theory. Ideas of this import had engaged the
minds of thinkers from the time of Plato, but found more or
less imperfect expression until the time of Kant and of Comte,
the founder of " sociology."
' The eighteenth century, spurred by the impetus of the Refor-
mation and the scientific discoveries of the seventeenth century,
became engrossed with the revelation of the power and destiny
of man. The feeling that man was not an "accident " but the
necessary complement of an otherwise incomplete system, gave
an added force to the validity of man's ideas. Champions of
deistic thought sprang up everywhere : in France, in England,
in Germany. But England, owing to the philosophy of Locke,
which led to " religious " doubt and abnegation, proved the
most prolific source of deism. The " common sense " of Locke
led to Toland's Christianity not Mysterious, Tindal's Chris-
tianity as old as the Creation, Voltaire's Lettres Philosopliiques,
and a host of other French and English followers. The argvi-
ments of both the English and the French defendants were
soon echoing in Germany and found as ardent supporters there.

Jt must not be supf)Osed that these deists had much in com-
mon besides a fundamental theory that whatever is, is right.
They bandied certain stock arguments, such as the absence of
an exclusive heaven for believers, which are still lieard to-day,
and dogmatized and reviled very much in the manner of pre-
ceding " Christians." William Law. the mystic, derided ration-
alism ; while Tindal proclaimed that the very attempt to destroy
reason by reason, was a demonstration that man had nothing
but reason to which to trust.

Lessing, though affected by this deistic development, did not
share the tendency to contemn the Jews. What he got of
value from the controversy, is the very thing for which a perusal
of this work is valuable for us, namely, the point of view. He
reveals the essence of eighteenth century individualism in the
unity which he perceived in a fully articulated difference. This

4 Preface

makes him a protagonist of evolution and developmeyit. What
this means for modern thought can be seen from Leshe Stephen's
statements in regard to those concepts : " Whether the develop-
ment be described as a process of divine education or as an
evolution determined by natural laws, it would be equally ad-
mitted on all hands that man, in the infancy of the race, was
fitted for an order of ideas entirely different from that which
would be appropriated at a later epoch. But in all the contem-
poraries there is a curious inability to accept this view." It is
equally hard for us to-day to accept any other. It was. too,
Lessing's conclusion.

Thus, though Lessing's theology may repel us, his humanity
attracts; thougTriiis^xegesis may seem tedious and wire-drawn,
his exultation is infectious. Like Milton's philosopher, we sit
with Lessing i' the center and enjoy bright day. We feel the
poetry and the rhapsody of the master and revel in the keen
analysis and vaticination of a seer. We become rationalistic-
romanticists like Nathan, and feel the passion of Novalis and
the contemplative placidity of Kant. We see the centuries
stretching to dim distance behind and to dim futurity beyond ;
we feel the hallowed twilight '" which a soft evening glow
neither quite encloses nor quite reveals." For Lessing saw
education in its larger racial aspects, as a genesis, as a social
ergon : saw it with a philosophy.

His argument is analogical and has the weakness of analogies.
He thinks revelation is education because education reveals God
to men, or reveals the unity of nature to man ; and revelation
does likewise. He thinks revelation is education because edu-
cation arouses spiritual aspiration ; and revelation aroused the
rude Hebrews to aspire. He thinks revelation is education be-
cause education is not merely writing but an exhibition of the
divine ; and so is revelation. To be sure, the reader may deny
the analogy and puncture the argument, but he can never gain-
say or forego the impetus that arises from the conception.

Finally, since, like all considerations of philosophy, this trac-
tate is only a small cross-section of the history of thought, the
introduction and notes must be borne with as patiently as may
be. Their intrusion occurs only that Lessing's contribution
may be able to appear in its completeness.

CONTENTS

PART I

Aspects of Eighteenth Century Thought 7

Epochs of Lessing's Life and Ideas - - - - - -' 13

PART II

Analysis of Lessing's Tractate ------ ..-o

The Education of the Human Race ------ ^^

'M>

PART I

Introduction

Nathan. For Truth !

And wants it hard and bare, as Truth were coin.
Yes, if an ancient coin which went by weight
I grant you ! But this coinage of to-day
That's counted down and has no other value
Except the stamp upon it, — that it's not.

Act III. Sc. 6.

An adequate consideration of Lessing's tractate, the Educa-
tion of the Human Race, demands : ( i ) a resume of the most
important aspects of European thought into which Lessing was
born and in which he lived (A), and a review of the chief
epochs of his life and the ideas for which he contended(B) ;
(2) the tractate itself. In this way it may be deduced how Les-
sing came naturally to think as he did ; what his ideas actually
were ; and what those ideas may fairly be said to anticipate or to
lead to.

I. A. A resume of the most important aspects of European
thought into which Lessing was born:

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's life extended from 1729 to I78[.
Rationalism was then in full career but was slowly being para-
lelled by naturalism.

The experiments of Bacon and Galileo reinforced by the phil-
osophy of Locke and Descartes, had brought metaphysics in the
seventeenth century under the dominion of mathematics and
science ; and Reason, at whose court Voltaire was later to be such
an important functionary, was holding sovereign sway. Out of
the philosophy of Descartes had grown that of Spinoza ( 1632-
1677), Leibniz (1646- 17 16). VVolfF (1679- 1754) and Rousseau
(1712-1778, Essays 1750. 1754, Nouvelle Heloise 1760, Social
Contract 1761, Ertiile 1762). Kant (1724-1804) and Herder
(1744-1803) were to be the descendants of these.

The line of Pope (1688-1744), " The proper study of mankind
is man," is not unaptly taken as indicating the direction of
English thought in the eighteenth century, and Minto points

8 The Education of the Human Race

out in his Liicratiire of the Georgian Era how representative
of English thought was the novel of manners, such as Sir Charles
Grandison and Tom Jones. " Feeling," as a " faculty," hardly
became differentiated before the Nouvelle Heloise (1760) ; and
" nature " in literature generally meant " man " prior to Thom-
son's Seasons and von Kleist's Frilhling (1749). Indeed, de-
spite the spiritual beauty and inspiration of the Friihlingsfeier
and Messias of Klopstock (1724-1803), we look in vain through
Nathan the Wise (1779) for any of that beauty of nature that
Shakspere, so ardently expounded by Lessing, would have rev-
eled in.

But Rationalism makes the individual self-dependent or,
rather, independent, and thus the rationalistic movement assumed
the phase known as individualism. In essence there is no differ-
ence between the two, but the different names are useful in
emphasizing somewhat different pvoints of view.

Individualism, or atomism, became monadistic under the hands
of Leibniz, but under Rousseau's treatment it assumed the form
of Naturalism. The individual, having made a state for his own
convenience, could dissolve the bonds when they proved irksome.
This was the thesis of the Social Contract. Thus Rationalism
assumed its new guise.

All three of these viewpoints: rationalism, individualism,
naturalism, must be kept in mind in considering the work of
Lessing, for he, in one way or another, and in higher or lower
degree, emphasizes all. But before passing on to see how he does
so (Cf, iB and Part II post) a better idea of the development
of his thought can be got by considering some of his predeces-
sors more in detail.

Voltaire: Voltaire's attitude is important as it illustrates so
well the French state of mind on the eve of the Revolution, and
because Voltaire was profoundly impressed by the characteristic
empirical English philosophy, which he studied in England itself,
especially from the scolding Bolingbroke, Applauding natural
religion as opposed to revealed religion he says to Uranie in one
of his Epistles :

Songe que du Tres — Haut la sagesse eternelle

A grave de sa main dans le fond de ton coeur

La Religion naturelle.

The Education of the Human Race 9

It is noteworthy that this condemned " atheist," like Spinoza,
another thinker branded by the same opprobrium, stands as un-
compromisingly as do Kant. Schelling and Royce, for the es-
sential religious tendency in man. And Lessing, too, though he
dealt such blows to the orthodox, never receded a step from his
belief in an Absolute and a Divine. Nay, as the Education of the
Human Race shows, the more nearly he stripped religion of what
he would consider its trappings, the more thoroughly religious
he became. Kant himself, the author of three critiques, who
sought truth by radical skepticism, founds his whole system on
duty and an appeal to the supersensible. And even Hume, the
arch sceptic, is haunted by a feeling of some mystic power.

Voltaire continues:

Le Dieu que je dois adorer

Je croirais le dishonorer

Par vm si criminel hommage :

(i. e. such as God, then received)

Entends, Dieu que j 'implore, entends du haut des Cieux,

Une voix plaintive et sincere:

Mon incredulite ne doit pas te deplaire

Mon coeur est uuvert a tes yeux

On te fait un tyran ; en toi je cherche un Pere

Je ne suis pas Chretien, mais c'est pour t'aimer mieux.^

And lastly, says this freethinker, he is guided through the hor-
ror of eternal night that seems to surround the temple of true
religion, by his reason:

Mais la raison qui m'y conduit

Fait marcher devant moi son fiambeau

qui m' eclaire.

^Compare Royce: Religions Aspect of Philosophy, p. 229: "A clerical
friend of the author's impressed him very much in early youth by tlie
words: God likes to have us doubt his existence, if we do so sincerely
and earnestly. These words are almost a truism; they surely ought to be
a truism. Yet they have been forgotten in many a controversy. Surely
if God exists, he knows at least as much about philosophy as any of
us do; he has at least as much appreciation for a philosophic problem as
we can have. And if his own existence presents a fine philosophic prob-
lem, he delights therein at least as much as we do." Also §§76 and 78,
Education, post.

10 The Education of the Human Race

This laudation of Reason is suggestive of the reiteration of
the word " sense " in Pope's Essay on Man and Essay on Criti-
cism, and of the reiteration of the word Reason throughout the
Education of the Human Race.

Rousseau: Closely akin to Voltaire is Rousseau, his rival and
bitter opponent. In the Social Contract, Liv. iv., Ch. viii, on
La religion de I'homme, Rousseau, who has just been attacking
ceremonial religion, says that in addition to that, there is la re-
ligion de rhomme :

Reste, done, la religion de Thomme ou le christianisme, non
pas celui d'aujourd'hui, mais celui de I'fivangile, qui en est
tout-a-fait different. Par cette religion sainte, sublime, veritable,
les hommes, enfans du meme Dieu, se reconnoissent tous pour
freres, et la societe qui les unit ne se dissout pas meme a la
mort.^

Spinoza: With the question whether Lessing was a Spinozist,
or not we are not now concerned. Sime in Lessing: His Life and
Writings, v. 2, p. 303, quotes Guhrauer, Hempel, Schwartz, and
Fontanes to show that he was not ; Heine to show that he was
a Deist on the road to Spinoza ; and Danzel, Hettner, and JacOby
to show that he was a Spinozist. What it is necessary to know
is : What did Spinoza contribute to the thought of his time and
how much may Lessing have been influenced by him.

Spinoza's Ethics was published posthumously in 1677, and so
was known to Lessing who, however, was not familiar with the
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, the Latin original of which was
s not extant and was found in a Dutch translation only as recently
as 1852. Lessing was a profound student of both Leibniz and
Spinoza, devoting himself to the latter from 1760 to 1763 when
the Jew's name was infamous.
.. As Royce gets to the spirit of modern philosophy through the
gateway of Spinoza, it will be profitable to consider some of the
things for which the outcast Jew stands. He was, though

' Cf. Lessing's distinction of '' the religion of Christ " and " the Chris-
tian religion." Sime's Lessing: His Life and Writings; also, the con-
ception of Goethe, a Spinozist, of the distinction between philosophy and
theology. Life and Times of Goethe by Herman Grimm, tr. by Sarah H.
Adams, p. 207.

The Education of the Human Race 1 1

broug-ht up on Descartes, a vis^orous and independent thinker,
usin<2: a mathematical method only to reduce his errors to a mini-
mum ; he endured privation and oblo(|uy for the sake of opinions,
and constantly refused overtures of aid from those richer than
he; he souj^'ht, in philosophv, not a speculative, but a practical,
guide f he was the associate of Leibniz, some of whose views
(i. e. the continuity of nature.* and the attainment of knowledge
through clear ideas'') he seems to reflect, but difTers with him as
a monadologist in the conception-"' that nothing can be destroyed
from within, as all change must come from without.

His conception of all nature, actual or potential, as an effluence
of Substance or God,** has several important corollaries : Nature
is uniform, that is, there can be no violation of her laws with-
out chaos ;" the world cannot have been created for any limited
end,^ e. g. the good of man. because that makes it anthroj)or-
morphic and not Absolute and Eternal ; volition depends upon
ideas and is identical with understanding f everything endeavors
to persist in its own being;'-* individual well-being is best pro-
moted by social well-being and social effort. •''

The extreme likeness of these views to some of those held by
Lessing cannot fail to be perceived as Lessing's attitude becomes
clearer by further exposition.

In addition to these, it may be well to note a few of the notions
contained in the Tractatus Thcologico-Politicus. His whole plea
there is for religious liberty and simply piety : that freedom of
thought should not only be granted but cannot be withheld with-
out danger.^^' " Revelation has obedience for its sole object, and
therefore, in purpose no less than in foundation and method,
stands entirely aloof from ordinary knowledge ; each has its

* Cf . Imfrovcnicnt of the Understanding.
*Cf. Ethics, Part i.

^Ethics, Part 3.
'^Ethics, Part i.
''Ethics, Part i.

'Ethics, Part 2. Cf. Dewey's voluntaristic psychology in Intcn'st as
Related to Will.

* Ethics, Part 3.

^"Ethics, Part 4. Cf. Dewey's School and Society. Most of these doc-
trines will be found summarized in his Political Treatise, especially under
Ch. 2 on Natural Right.

" Ch. 20. Cf. Lessing's frankness and vigor of speech in the IVolfe^i-
battel Fragments, Anti-Goeze, Nathan and the Education of the Human
Race.

12 The Education of the Human Race

separate province, neither can be called the handmaid of the
other. "^2

" Everyone should be free to choose for himself the
foundations of his creed, and faith should be judged
only by its fruits. "^^ " The natural rights of the individual are
coextensive with desires and powers, and * * * no one is
bound to live as another pleases but is the guardian of his own
liberty.""

Spinoza in Ch. 2, notes the slow growth of the idea of God's
omniscience and omnipresence. This idea of development, the
gradually perfected notion of God and all that a conception of
him involves, is of the very essence of the Education of the
Human Race as will be pointed out later.

The essential individualism is, of course, apparent here — in-
deed, so violently so that Spinoza's appeal for social helpfulness,
nay, the necessity of it, is apt to be lost sight of. But it must
not be forgotten that the strong humanity of The Education of
the Human Race and of Nathan are vitally dependent on the
conception of the interdependence of the individual and society.
These two must not be regarded as mutually exclusive or antago-
nistic. Similarly, Froebel pleads for a development of indi-
viduality, but not the destructive individuality of Rousseau. He
seeks a contained and directed individuality that finds its most
fruitful field in society and social cooperation. The notion of
Froebel is no more difficult to grasp than that of Spinoza and
of Lessing and, indeed, does not differ in this particular from
either.

Leibniz: Lessing was also a profound student of Leibniz and
owes much to him no doubt, but rather in method than in mat-
ter. In one of his essays he gives Spinoza the credit of dis-
covering the doctrine of prearranged harmony without which
Leibniz would never have been able to make a connection be-
tween the windowless monad, the soul, and the windowless

" Preface, Elwes translation, p. 9. Cf. Lessing's comments on the first
Wolfenbiittel Fragments, post.

^^Preface, ib., p. 10. Cf. Nathan's individualism.

" Preface, ib., p. 10. Cf. for definition of natural right, ch. 2, of A
Political Treatise and note Nathan's Must to Hati, Act I, Sc. 3, or § 2 of
the Education of the Human Race, post.

The Education of the Human Race 13

monad, God.^^ But Spinoza needed no prearranj^ed harmony :
his system was a harmonious whole in its very conception.

Leibniz stands for an atomistic or indivichiahstic philosophy;
for continuity of creation ; for scientific induction and method ;
for vigor of utterance; and for "enlightenment" or the neces-
sity of ridding dark or vague ideas of their darkness and vague-
ness. But his conception of the universe is much more mechani-
cal and unsatisfactory than that of Spinoza, wiio is undoubtedly
Lessing's great inspiration and philosophic teacher.

It may be well to reiterate some of the points that have been
evolved in the foregoing discussion, points which Lessing will
exemplify in his Education of the Human Race and Nathan the
Wise. They are : Rationalism ; Individualism with coUectivistic
or socialistic leaning ; Naturalism ; and Continuity or Evolution.

i-B. A review of the chief epochs of Lessing's life and the
ideas for which he contended.

Lessing came naturally by his bent for theological discussion.
His clerical ancestors extend back at least as far as Clemens
Lessing (c. 1580) ; his grandfather, Theophilus, wrote, as a
thesis for his Master's degree, " De Religionum Tolerantia,"^'^
and his father, Johann Gottfried, was a pastor of some distinc-
tion, a close student despite poverty, and a writer with a literary
style free from pedantry, but with a horror of Catholicism,
Pietism, and Scepticism.

Lessing was a precocious student and ilevoured classics and
mathematics — subjects that later made Leibniz a congenial writer
for him.

In 1746, he went to Leipsic to pursue theolog)'. but continued
his classical studies and took part in philosophic discussions pre-
sided over by Kiistner, a professor of mathematics. It was here,
too, that he began his close association with the theatre, an as-
sociation that could not fail to help him toward thos« independent
views that made him the black sheep of his family and one of
the most distinguished poets and dramatists of Germany. Here,

"Darin bin ich noch Hirer nieinung, dass es Spinoza ist. vm-IcIht Leib-
nizen auf die vorherbestimmte Harmonic gebracht hat.
^* Sime, V. i, p. 21.

14 The Education of the Hu}iian Race

too, he made a friend of Christlob Mylius, a man who had ven-
tured to applaud a Kamenz rector who had pubHshed, much to
the indignation of the Rev. Johann Gottfried Lessing. a work
called The Theatre as a School of Eloquence. Mylius, also,
edited, for a year, a paper called The Freethinker. Such was
the company that the clever and socially disposed Gotthold
Ephraim fell into at the outset of his career.

In 1748, he went to Berlin to be a journalist and critic and to
reinforce, with terseness and vigor, a style that was to make him
one of the most dreaded of opponents and one of the most
stimulating of essayists and thinkers.

In 1 75 1 he returned to Wittenberg at the request of his family,
who heard aghast of his strange ways of studying theolog\% and
here he had a disagreement with Voltaire that led to an acrimoni-
ous correspondence which, years later, prevented his getting pre-
ferment from Frederick the Great.

In 1752, the Wittenberg resolve not persisting, he returned to
Berlin and edited a periodical called the Theatrical Library, and
became known definitely as a theatrical critic of constructive ten-
dencies He entered upon the attack on Gottsched," the Leipsic
professor, who upheld French art as a model ; wrote a keen
satire on Lange, who had translated Horace ; showed his skill and
penetration in his Epigrams ; and composed critical letters on
German literature. The Ein Vade Mecum fiir den Herrn Sam.
Gotth. Lange revealed his ability as a controversialist of pro-
found attainments and his fame as a polemic became thoroughly
established. It was to be no novice that entered the arena against
Goeze twenty years later.

It was during these years that he wrote Das Christentum der
Vernunft}^ which is of interest in connection with his exposition
of the doctrine of the Trinity in The Education of the Human
Race; and the several Theologische Recensioneii aus der Ber-
linischen Privilegierten Zeitung, among which is (1751) Stiick
143, a consideration of Warburton's Gottliche Sendungen Mosis,^^
which hints at the origin of sections 24 and 25 of The Education
of the Human Race.

" Cf. Kuno Francke's Social Forces in German Literature, Art,
Gottsched, p. 179.
^* Lessinaj's Sdmtliche Werke, v. 17. p. 2t,. Cotta Library.
" lb. p. 38.

The Education of the Human Race 15

In Berlin he learned to know and to admire such Jews as
Mendelssohn, the original of Nathan, and Dr. Cumi)erz, and
here he worked on a comedy. Die Judcn, which had been written
in 1749. Stuck 93, of 1753. in tiie Thcologische Rczensionen
was a notice of Sclireiben eincs Judcn a)i einen Philosophen,-" in
which, after reflecting on the shameful restrictions placed upon
Jews, he quotes with approbation the words of the author:

" ' Perhaps a combination of circumstances as propitious as
those which revealed Peter the Great, will send a leader who
will, to transcendent power, add the greatest penetration of
intellect ; who will free a nation which, as noble as any other, is
now languishing in poverty, ignorance, contempt, and a kind of
slavery. Should such happen, I am convinced that reverence
would believe it saw in the person of this prince, the wished-for
approach of a Messiah ; that eagerness would lay, at his feet,
innumerable precious sacrifices ; and that gratitude would erect
to him, in the memory of descendants and in Jewish history, an
ever-enduring monument.' " And he adds : " Truth and reason
acquit the author (the Jew) of any accusation that might be
brought by bitter prejudice."

This gives the attitude that is so plainl}- marked in Nathan the
Wise and appears more or less distinctly in The Education of
the Human Race.

His attitude towards Deism and his essentially reverent nature
are disclosed in Stiick 137,-^ for the year 1754, " True Presenta-
tion of the Deistic Principles in two Comrrsatious between a
Sceptic and a Deist.'' He says, in part:

" The original of this small but precious work first appeared
in the year 171 1 and since then has been often reprinted. It
seems that its author, who has remained unknown, was moved
to defend the cause of Christianity in such a remarkable way,
through the writings of Toland.

" He has, not a Christian, to take issue with tlie deist, but a
sceptic, or. rather, a man. who has enough intellect and impar-
tiality to allow the Christian religion not to be offended by any
false accusations, and to set forth the arguments again>t the
latter in their true light.

" This sceptic comes to the conclusion that deism is a mask
and that the wearer, under it, seeks to repel abhorrent charges
of atheism, or seeks the more adroitly to attack the Christian
religion."

^'Lessing's 5"d>K//u7ii' U'crkc. v. 17, p. 53. Cotta Library.
""lb. p. 53.

i6 The Education of the Human Race

His tolerant views, on the other hand, are revealed in another
of the Rezensionen, dated 1754, and entitled Rettung des Hierony-
mits Cardanus. The significance that this composition has for
us, is its exposition of the relationship of idolatry, Judaism,
Christianity and Mohammedanism. The first three of these are
again expounded in The Education of the Human Race, and the
relation of the last three is revealed by Nathan the Wise. In
addition to this, Lessing's independent viewpoint is interesting
as showing how early he ventured to assail the bulwarks of con-
servatism. He says,^^ after commenting on Cardan's varied ca-
reer, the story of which reads much like that of Paracelsus :

" It would have been a miracle if such a rare spirit should have
escaped the suspicion of atheism. What more is needed to bring
that upon one than to think independently and to challenge
natural prejudices? Seldom has anyone, indeed, been compelled,
as was Cardan, to unite abhorrent propositions to a questionable
life.

"An apparent slander, which is still incessantly carried from
one book to another, compels me to bear this suspicion in mind.
It is founded, as is well known, on three things : on a book which
he is said to have written against the immortality of the soul ;
on his astrological folly in casting a nativity of God ; and finally,
on certain passages in his work De Suhtilitate."

Lessing waives discussion on the first two of these and con-
fines himself to the last. He then states the case against Cardan
in the words of one of the latter's enemies as follows :

" In the eleventh book of his De Suhtilitate he briefly com-
pares the four chief religions (Idolatry, Judaism, Christianity,
and Mohammedanism) with each other, and, after he, without
deciding for any, has allowed them to contend with each other,
he concludes with these careless words : igitur his arbitrio znc-
toriae relictis. Which in good German means that he wishes to
leave to chance the side upon which the victory may fall."

After quoting Cardan on the four religions, Lessing inquires :

" Why should this attitude be really condemned ? Is the com-
parison of the various religions in itself punishable, or is the
strife merely over the manner in which Cardan has undertaken
the matter? >

Lessing's Sdmtliche IVerke, v. 17, p. 63, et passim. Cotta Library.

The Education of the Human Race 17

" .To maintain the first is not to be thought of for a moment.
What is more necessary, is for one to convince himself of his
belief, and what is less possible than conviction without previous
proof."

And adds: " If the Christian is decreed to investigate only the
doctrines of Christ, then the Mahometan is decreed to concern
himself only with the doctrine of Mahomet. The former, it is
true, would not thereby run the risk of changing a better belief
for a worse, but the latter would, also, not have the opportunity
of exchanging a worse, for a better. Yet why do I speak of
risk? He must place a weak trust in the everlasting truths of
God who fears, amidst lies, to maintain one against the other."

It was during this Berlin period, too, that Lessing producefl
Sara Sampson, based on the Clarissa of Richardson, in which he
made another attack on rococo art, and endeavored to show, as
Wordsworth did, fifty years later, that the lives of the humble
contain adequate literary material.

In 1755 he went back to Leipsic and there made the acquain-
tance of von Kleist,-^ whose Frilhling had elicited his warm ap-
plause. It was about this time that he wrote, in sentences, and
very much in the style of his Das Christentum der Vernunft, a
few thoughts entitled Ueber die Enstehung der geoffenbarten
Religion which is of interest in connection with the notions of
revealed religion that he published twenty-five years later in the
Education of the Human Race. A few extracts will serve to
show Lessing's position in regard to natural or positive religion
and to demonstrate how much more weight he put on a man's
real effort to bring out the best that was in him than on any
creed. This is apropos when the chief idea of the Ring Story
of Nathan is recalled.

"To acknowledge a God; to seek to entertain of him the
w^orthiest conceptions ; and to have respect for these conceptions
in all our acts and thoughts — this is the most complete content
of all natural religion.

" To this natural religion, according to the measure of his
powers, is every man pledged and bound."

As this individual quality would cause insuperable individual
diflferences, it is necessary to build up certain conventional con-
ceptions which natural religious truths would inherently possess.

"The Tellheim of Minna z'On Barnhclm.

1 8 The Education of the Human Race

These conventional conceptions constitute a positive or revealed
religion which receives its sanction from the fact that it is medi-
ately from God. This inevitableness is the same in every positive
religion, so that the inner truth of one is as great as the inner
truth of the other. That, therefore, is the best revealed or
positive religion which mingles with the natural religion the few-
est conventionalities.

These notions are contained in the following:

"As, however, this measure (of the powers of the individual)
would be different in each man. and the natural religion of each
man also would differ, it has been thought necessary to build
up a defence against the injury which this diversity might, with
others, bring about; not, indeed, in the natural conception of
freedom but in the condition of civic community.-*

" That is : as soon as religion was acknowledged to make for
the general good, it became necessary to unite upon certain ideas
and conceptions, and to ascribe to these conventional ideas and
conceptions exactly the importance and necessity which the re-
ligious truths, naturally recognized, had of themselves.-^

" That is : it was necessary to construct, out of the religion of
nature which was not fit for a general similar practice among
men, a positive religion, just as there had been constructed out of
the law of nature, and for the same cause, a positive law.

" This positive religion received its sanction through the au-
thority of its founder, who announced that its conventionalities
came just as certainly from God, though mediately through him
(the founder), as the essential part of the religion came, imme-
diately, through the reason of each individual.-''

" The necessity of a positive religion, by virtue of which the
natural religion in each state became modified according to the
natural and accidental constitution of the latter, I call the inner
truth of the religion. And this inner truth is just as great in the
one case as in the other.

"All positive and revealed religions are, accordingly, equally
true and equally false: equally true so far as it was everywhere
equally necessary for each to adjust himself to the varying ideas
in order to bring consonance and unity into the revealed re-
ligion f equally false, though not so obviously so, wherever one
did adjust himself — adhered to the essential but weakened and
repressed it.

Cf. § 7, et passim. Education of the Human Race.

Cf. §§36 and 37. Ibid.

a. § 4. Ibid.

Cf. § 14. Ibid.

The Education of the IIu)iian Race 19

" The best revealed or positive reli.i^ion is that which unites
the fewest conventional additions to the natural religion: which
restrains in the slightest way the beneficent operations of the
natural relig'ion."

These passages, though written in 1755-17'K), bear such close
analogy to some of those in the Education of the Human Race
and Nathan that it becomes clearer than ever that Lessing's trac-
tate and play were the result of a lifetime of reflection.

We see here, clearly, what Lessing means by Revelation, which
is the " Education " of the tractate: we have the advantage of
what amounts to a definition, and much light is shed on Revela-
tion as it is to be interpreted in the Education of the Human
Race. It is a divine tiling, an inevitable thing, therefore it must
exist in all natural religions, and when perceived cannot be gain-
said. It is not merely the written word of an ill-reported chroni-
cler, but it is a spiritual effluence that suffuses a religion ; it is
the quintessence of religion ; it is, so to speak, the real religious
element of religion.

It is no surprise, after reading these sentences, to hear that
in Nathan the plea is made for a tolerant consideration of the
Jew and Mohammedan. Lessing, whose ideas from early to late
life are remarkably consistent, simply could not have written
otherwise.

This view of consistency is not maintained by all critics, as may
be seen from the following extract from the introduction of
Goring in the 17th volume of Lessing's Siimtliche IVerke. where
he says in regard to the Ueber die Entstehung der geoffenbarten
Religion:

" It (the fragment called On the Origin of Revealed Religion)
stands in essential contrast to Lessing's Education of the Human
Race. In the first fragment, on the Moravians,-** Lessing is the
defender of a Christianity of action ; in the second. On the Chris-
tianity of Reason,-'-* he appears as the speculative theologian ; in
the present one^'' he reveals himself as a freethinker."

And he adds: "In regard to Lessing's explanation that the
inevitableness of a positive religion is its inner truth, Christian

^ Gcdankcn iiber die Hcrnihutcr, ib. p. 15.
'* Das Christcntum dcr Vermmft, ib. p. 23.
^^ Ubcr die Entstehung der geoffenbarten Religion, ib. p. 1 12.

20 TJie Education of the Human Race

Gross says, ' This inevitableness of the positive religion which is
thus called its inner truth does not appear so just, and Lessing's
performance on this head resembles positive scorn.' "

But enough can be shown from all three of these productions
to indicate that, in the main, the ideas that Lessing put forward
in his last years were merely the mature fruits that had blossomed
long before.

Goring himself explains the motive for the Gedanken iiber die
Herrnhuter as follows :

" The fundamental thought of the work declares that man is
made for action, not for reasoning, and shows, in a practical ex-
position of the development according to philosophy and theol-
ogy, that religion is continually displaced by theology ; as com-
fortable theory, with the sophistry of egotism, supersedes un-
pleasant fact."

It is true that Lessing in the course of his exposition says :^^
" Man was created for doing and not for thinking," but he
quotes Socrates with approval,^- " Foolish mortal, what is above
thee, is not for thee ! Look within. In thee are labyrinthine
depths within which thou couldst profitably lose thyself. Here
canst thou seek the most secret signs ! Here canst thou learn
things weak and things sturdy, the hidden paths and the public
outburst of thy passions ! Here stands the domain where are
thy subject and thy king! Here is to be apprehended and con-
trolled the one thing that thou shouldst apprehend and control :
thyself."

This certainly proclaims in no equivocal way the attitude of
individualism that we see in Nathmi and, indeed, really in the
Education of the Human Race. " The labyrinthine depths in
which one can profitable lose himself," are those explored only
when reason lights the way. Subtilising is imperative, despite the
thesis of the article that religion fades as theology advances.

Lessing draws a parallel between the fate of philosophy which
declined from the simple introspection of Socrates to the empty
disputes of the scholars, and the fate of religion which, from the
simple days of Adam, suffered a decline not halted even in our
own. Even of Abraham's descendants he says :^^ "All became

" Sdmtliche Werke, v. 17, p. 16. Gedanken iiber die Herrnhuter.
"« Ibid.
^Ib. p. 17.

The Education of the Ihiman Race 21

unfaithful to the truth — some less than others, and the descend-
ants of Abraham least. On this account, God vouchsafed to
them a particular regard. But by degrees, even among them,
the multitude of insignificant and self-selected customs became
so great that only a few of them retained a correct conception
of God. The remainder continued to cling to superficial illusions,
and regarded God as a being that could not live unless they
brought to him his morning and evening sacrifice."

In section 6 of the Education, Lessing indicates that polytheism
was a natural result of the early operations of the human rea-
son.^* Here, he implies that the schism arose through delusion.
The important idea seems to be that both views lead to the neces-
sity of revelation. He continues, in the Gcdankcn, as follows :

".Who could snatch the world from its gloom? Who could
help it to conquer superstition? No mortal, ^to? aTro firfx^vrj';-

" Thus Christ came. May I be permitted to venture to re-
gard him here only as a God-enlightened teacher."

Thus revelation is personified in Christ who is the teacher.^'

The mission of Christ, he maintains, was to place religion back
in her earlier and more spiritual bounds. He resumes, quoting:
" God is a spirit whom thou shouldst adore in spirit ! What does
he urge more than that? and what tenet is mightier than this in
binding all species of religion together?"

This passage, also, more than assumes that essential unity of
spirit in all religions that finds expression in Nathan.

The Das Chrislcnluui der Vcrnunft, composed in 1753. three
years after the Gedanken. is chiefly noticeable in this connection
for its exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity which strongly
resembles that in section y2> o^ the Educatioti.

Some of the paragraphs of Das Christoitum dcr J'crnunft are:

3. Conception, volition, and creation are, in God. one act. It
may be said : Everything God conceives, that, he also creates.

4. God can conceive himself in only two ways: either he
thinks all his perfections simultaneously and himself as the
central notion of them ; or, he thinks his perfections separately.

** Cf. 6, Education of the Human Race and the Ernst and Folk.
" Cf . Education of the Human Race. §§ 5<j, (o and 61.

22 The Education of the Human Race

each separate from the other and each, according to degrees,
separated from him.

5. God conceived himself from eternity hither in all his com-
pleteness : that is, God created himself, from eternity, a being
to whom there was lacking no perfection that he himself pos-
sessed.

6. This Being, the Writ calls God the Son, or, what might be
better, the Son God: a God, because no attribute is lacking
that belongs to God ; a son, because, according to our notion,
Avhatever presents something to the mind appears to have a
certain antecedence to the presentation.

8. This Being may be called a picture of God but an identical
picture.^"

9. The more tv/o things have in common with each other, the
greater is the harmony between them. The greatest harmony,
therefore, must exist between two things which have everything
in common, that is between two things which together are
only one.

It is this Harmony which Lessing declares is the Holy Ghost
of Scripture. It is worth while noting for two reasons : first, be-
cause it suggests Leibniz, as does indeed some of the rest of the
exposition ; and second, because it suggests the third element of
the Trinity that is alluded to in the Education but there explained
only in part. That is, the first two ideas are given as here, but
the third is left unaccounted for.

Although this composition preceded Lessing's close study of
Spinoza, there is something of the spirit of that philosopher in :

13. God conceived his perfection seriatim: that is, he created
beings of which each one has something of his perfection, for, to
repeat, with God, every thought is a creation.

14. All these beings together are called the world.

But the remaining sections indicate the influence of Leibniz,
especially those immediately following, and remind one of Pope's
borrowed philosophy in : " Of systems possible, if 'tis confest,
that wisdom infinite must form the best."''^

15. God might have conceived his perfections distributed in
endless forms. There could, thus, have been an infinite number
of worlds if God had not. all along, conceived the most perfect

^* Lessing uses the same arguments in the Education, § 73.
^ Lessing himself, in Pope, ein Metaphysiker! shows that the If, here,
has no significance.

The Education of the Human Race 23

and also thus amonij these forms conceived and thereby really
made the most complete form.

He goes on to say that the most perfect way for God to think
these worlds would be in a continuous series. Hence § 17:

They must make a series in which each member contains every-
thing that the other members contain and a little more. But this
little more never reaches the final limit.

In this way, the continuity of the world is shown to be per-
fect.

18. Such a series must be an infinite series, and, in this sense,
the diuturnity of the world is incontestable.

We have in these two sections the same thought that in Leibniz
produced the differential calculus with its infinite series and the
thought of the true perfection of the world.

In the Education, Lessing is just as anxious, as he is here, to
show the continuity of the world, its essential oneness.^"
We have, too, the monadistic notion of Leibniz which was to
lead, within a very few years, to the complete intellectual inde-
pendence of Lessing.

He continues by saying that God creates no absolutely separate
thing, hence, § 22 : " These simple beings are like limited gods,
hence, also, their perfections must be similar to the perfections
of God, just as parts to a whole."

This, like § 18, is a plea for the immortality of the soul,
Spinozistic in aspect, but nevertheless earnest and deep-seated.
The doctrine of immortality, Lessing finds, is the first chief con-
tribution of Revelation. ^^

In § 23 he puts forward an idea already referred to and making
up § "/^ of the Education where he affirms that God's perfect and
necessary conception of himself is that figure of the Trinity
usually known as the Son :*" To the perfections of God belong
this also: That he is aware of his perfection; and this: That he

"^The Education, § 54.

"The Education, § 27 et post. 44, 58, &c.

*° Cf. also : Die Seele. sagt Spinoza, ist mit dem Leibe auf eben die
Art vereiniget, als der Begriff der Seele von sich selbst niit der Seele
vereiniget ist. From " Durch Spinoza ist Leibniz nur auf die Spur der
vorherbestimmten Harmonic gekommen." 1763. Siitnlliclic IVcrke, v. 19,
p. 88.

24 The Education of the Human Race

can act according to his perfection. Both are equally the seal
of his perfections.

Lastly, the note of individualism is struck again, and the neces-
sary moral drawn, that makes the conception of duty fairly com-
plete in § 26, where, having shown that those that are conscious
of their perfections and possess the power of acting in propriety
therewith, are entitled to be called " moral," i. e., capable of fol-
lowing a law, he adds :

" This law emanated from their own nature and can be no
other than : Act according to thy individual perfections."

It is instructive, in this connection, to note what he had to say
of Rousseau two years later in reviewing the Disc ours sur I'ori-
gine et les fondemens de ringalite parmie les honimes*'^' because
it shows how thoroughly immersed in the Rousseau stream he
was. After stating that Rousseau is as little satisfied with the
condition of inequality in the world as he was, in his earlier essay,
with the improvement conferred by the arts and sciences, Lessing
goes on to laud the citizen of Geneva in these w^ords : " He is,
above all, still the keen philosopher, who regards no prejudice
though it were never so popular, but who steadily approaches
Truth without concerning himself with those appearances which,
at every step, he must sacrifice in her name. His heart takes part
in all his speculative eflForts and he speaks, therefore, in a tone
very different from that of a venal sophist whom self-interest or
boasting has made a teacher of wisdom."

In 1758 Lessing went back to Berlin and worked on the Litera-
turbriefe and his Fabeln. In 1760 he went to Breslau and for
several years divided his time between his library of 6,000 vol-
umes, the study of Spinoza and the Christian Fathers, and the
gaming table, around whose board he met the sprightly army
officers that made up for him the zest and briskness his iife
craved.

In 1765 he returned to Berlin and wrote the Laokoon (1766)
and Minna von Barnhehn (1767): the former, a critique that
showed the natural limitations of poetry and of the plastic arts ;
the latter, a drama that reflected national spirit.

*^ Sdmtliche Werke, v. 19, p. 45, 1755.

The Education of ihc Human Race 2$

In 1767 he betook himself to Hamburg and helped to establish
a national theater. Here appeared his criticisms on dramatic art
in those papers now called the Hamburgischc Dramaturgic, the
object of which was to free the German stage from the fetters
of French art and to direct the public attention to the works of
the Greeks and of Shakspere.

In 1770 he took up his abode at Wolfenbiittel as librarian and
published his essay on Berengarius of Tours after finding an MS.
of that churchman in reply to Lanfranc on transubstantiation. In
1771 appeared his Epigrams and, in 1772, Emilia Galotti and
essays on history and literature.

From 1774 to 1778, he published as Wolfenbiittel Fragments,
various extracts from one, Reimarus, whose daughter had given
Lessing some of her father's MSS. Reimarus had been professor
of Oriental languages at Hamburg and had written a defence of
the reasonable worship of God. Lessing published this in 1777
as a " fragment by an unknown hand," and appended to it the
first half of his Education of the Human Race.

Goeze chose to take up cudgels in defence and very shortly the
contestants were belaboring each other in doughty style. Lessing,
in support of the position that the Bible was not necessary to a
belief in Christianity, wrote Eine Parabel, A.viomata. and Anti-
Go ese.

The Parabel is interesting in connection with the Ring story
of Nathan, also a parable. In the Parabel there are a number of
people each of whom possesses the plan of a beautiful temple of
worship. The temple is discovered to be on fire and all of the
people owning plans of it become much concerned lest the fane
be destroyed. Instead, however, of concerting to put the fire
out, each runs about with his plan, endeavoring to show thereon
just what portion is being then destroyed by the flames. Finally,
it is observed that the fabric is not on fire at all and that the fiery
effect was given by the reflected Hght of the setting sun.

This stultification of the orthodox was ingenious enough to
stir the religious polemics to their depths, and pamphlets be-
gan to muster. Lessing's skill in this " fabulous " literature was
in no small way enhanced by his earlier composition of fables,
and this adroitness, coupled with his learning and masterly knowl-
edge of fence, made him a redoubtable antagonist.

26 The Education of the Human Race

It must not, however, be inferred that he made all of Reimarus's
positions his own. He did not. He did not hesitate to criticise
and to supplement : he drew a distinction between the religion of
Christ and the Christian religion. Reimarus's contention was
that the Old Testament was not written in order to reveal a
religion since that book makes no mention of a future life. Les-
sing agreed in large measure with this view but insisted that
there was revelation despite the absence of teaching on immor-
tality and divine unity, because there was a lesson suited to the
time.*-

In 1778-9 he wrote Nathan the Wise, and, in 1780, the Edu-
cation of the Human Race.

From 1777 to 1780 he wrote Ernst and Falk, nominally an
Freemasonry but really on broad philosophical topics. In the
course of the dialogue, he discusses the question of the ideal state
and shows how natural forces would tend to split up a large ag-
gregate into smaller units possessing varying governments and
religions. Though this result is inevitable, the inference is clear
that the common origin of these varying beliefs is intended to
plead for their reconciliation. That is, the world cannot be a
unit unless toleration can urge it to be.

A few extracts will serve to show the general nature of the
exposition and to indicate the attitude of Lessing in the years just
preceding the composition of the Education and of Natlmn.

Falk, to make his point, assumes the best possible political
union, and says :*^

" We shall assume the best state ; we shall assume that every-
body in the world lives in this best state. Would they, therefore,
all the people in the world, make only one state?"

Ernst admits that probably they would not.

This gives Falk his opening and he goes on to show that the
parts would be, very much as at present, such as German, French,
Dutch, Spanish, etc., each small state having its own interests.
These various interests would collide and thus drive the parts
asunder. Hence, paradoxically, that which united them would
prove the strongest motive for dissolution. There would, too,
be physical causes :

' Cf . §§ 22 and 26 of the Education.
' Zzveites Gesprdch.

The Education of the Human Race 27

" Many of the smaller states would have very different cli-
mates, hence very different requirements and satisfactions, hence
very different customs and practices, hence very different morals,
hence very different religions.*^ * * * Then would men he.
as now, Jews, Christians, Turks and the like."

This being the case, differences would be bound to exist as
they do to-day when different sects found laws that are foreign
to a natural religion.

In short, as a single state could not exist without a religion,
and the chances of such a religion's having universal accept-
ance, being decidedly remote, the probability that such a general
state might come into existence is very distant indeed. As he
adds :^* " One state : many states. Many states : many theories
of state craft. Many theories of state craft : many religions."

These quotations show the breadth of Lessing's view. They
justify Francke in saying^'* that Lessing's productions have " mas-
culine vigor and intensity because they have republican fearless-
ness and monarchical discipline," " cosmopolitanism and nati(jn-
ality or freedom and discipline." That is, the vitality and sponta-
neity of Rousseau are tempered with Teutonic caution and
thoroughness. His boldness of research, his independence of tra-
dition, his optimism gleaming through the lines of the Education
of the Human Race and of Nathan, reveal the idea of personality
so prominent in German thought at the close of the eighteenth
century and revealed in the English romantic movement from
Cowper to Burns.

On the disciplinary side, he is allied to Locke, though his
philosophy, unlike that of the English sage, is not static. Through
the same agent, it might fairly be asserted that he was allied to
Rousseau. For however individualistic the French essayist might
appear to be. he would have, in his educational writings at least,
his pupil Emile subjected to the inexorable discipline of " things."
This conception of Lessing's allegiance, goes far towards ex-
plaining the self-renunciation of Nathan and the " obedience " of
the Education of the Human Race.

Nor was he less Rousseau's disciple in the " republican fearless-
ness " which appears so admirably in his acceptance of Spinoza

" Zzi'cites Gcspriich. Ci. also Herder : Idccn cur Philosophic der
geschichte dcr Mcnschhcit II. Achtcs Buck. Cotta Library.

" Kuno Francke, Social Forces in German Literature, p. 277 and 279.

28 The Education of the Human Race

as against Leibniz at a time when Spinoza himself was derided
even by Leibniz, so that Elwes says** that the first real recogni-
tion of Spinoza, echoes of which appear in Goethe, Schleier-
macher, Heine, Novalis, Hegel, Coleridge, Wordsworth and
Shelley, came from Lessing. And his individualistic philosophy,
with its collectivistic basis, the phase of thought so liberally ex-
pounded in Herder and in Kant, and finding renewed expression
in Froebel and Dewey in such books as The Child and the Curric-
ulum, and School and Society, is in no small measure owing to
his study of the Amsterdam Jew. But he advanced beyond his
mentor, for Spinoza sought " peace " and argued for an attain-
able goal, while Lessing, interested in processes rather than prod-
ucts, found truth in an endless progressive endeavor to arrive at
the order of things.

This shows his interest in the process of " becoming," allies
him to the great Konigsberg philosopher, and accounts for his
criticism and his toleration.

Toleration, as can be seen from Locke's Letters Concerning
Toleration, w^as " in the air," but it is also true, that toleration
and criticism are sisters, and Lessing was a born critic.*'

" Criticism is based," says Caird,** " on the idea that, belov/
all special phases of knowledge, there is a general form of
knowledge, or a general ' schema,' — to borrow an expression
from Kant — which we carry along with us and by which, all,
even the least instructed of men, impart a kind of unity to their
experience." " It is a deeper kind of scepticism which goes back
to the beginning of our thought * * * jt suggests that the
question at issue has certain presuppositions without the examina-
tion of which, it cannot be decided."

Lessing had the inestimable advantage of being an artist as w^ell
as a critic and, like Aristotle, could distinguish between the
methods of art and the methods of logic. *^ This made him prac-
tical, and kept his criticism from becoming too airily philosophic,
as were Plato's and Cousin's, and his art from becoming stereo-
typed.

" Spinoza's Works, Intro, p. vii.

*" Francke, Social Forces in German Literature, pp. 270 and 275 for
the sigTiificance of the Laokdon and Hamhurgische Dramaturgie.
*® Critical Philosophy of Kant, v. i, p. 18.
** Cf. W. Basil Worsfold Principles of Criticism, p. 42.

The Education of the Human Race 29

But Lessing is not primarily a literary critic nov is it in that
capacity that we are at present to judge iiini. He was not con-
cerned, like Addison, in the midst of pseudo-classicism, for the
true function of the imagination ; he was not, like liacon, con-
cerned with foreshadowing the modern conceptioii of the greater
part of poetry as " thought as opposed to form ;"""* he was not,
like Arnold, a confessed discoverer of literature as a criticism
of life — yet he partook, after all. of the nature of all of these.
He pleaded,"''^ even after praising Thomson's Seasons, that poetry
has nothing to do with description; his greatest play achieved
its chief distinction through its philosophic conceptions, and its
criticism of life.

Rather did his criticism provide him with a point of view, and
its profundity proved an able forerunner of the critical piiilosophy
that was its philosophic successor.

"Cf. Walt Whitman.

" Sir Robert Phillimore's Laokoon, Pref. p. 20.

PART II

The Education of the Human Race.

I. Analysis.

Hugo Goring, in the nineteenth volume of Lessing's SamtUchc
Werke in the Cotta Library, writes the following introduction to
Lessing's tractate :

" The first half of this profound treatise, Lessing published in
1777 with the four WoJfenhuttel Fragments of an Unknotvn'
(§§ 1-53)- Ii^ the summer of 1777 he wrote the second half.
In 1780 the conclusion appeared. In the meantime occurred the
production of the dramatic poem Nathan the Wise.

" With the publication of the first 53 paragraphs. Lessing had
remarked by way of self-criticism : ' The author of this work
may not be, by any means, so heterodox as he, at first sight,
appears to be.' He develops, in the course of his work, the re-
lation of education to revelation ; secures an insight into the
stages of education and the progress of mankind ; founds thereon
his thoughts of true toleration ; and arrives at an hypothesis of the
transmigration of souls, ^ upon which, to be sure, some small
worth is to be laid but in which is to be discerned in a very much
less degree the effective power of Lessing's conception of the
world.

" In regard to this, Kuno Fischer remarks : * It needed no
palingenesis to perceive in the religions the great educational
stages of mankind and thence to attain that religious point of
view which rises high above trammeled faiths and instigates the
virtue of true toleration, the opposite of all vices."

Whatever notion may be entertained of Lessing's religious at-
titude it must be admitted that he stands for the following con-
ceptions :

1. That there is a law in human history;

2. That in regard to this law everyone has a right to use his
reason in the most liberal way ;

^ Lessing's idea is rather a re-incarnation than a transmigration as this
latter term is usually understood. Cf. §§94 and 95 of the Education.

The Education of the lliDnan Race 31

3. That education is to be conceived of frenetically but as a
ceaseless process ;

4. That work and effort are conditions necessary to the evolu-
tion of the individual ;

5. That education is fundamentally ethic and democratic ;

6. That man, " nature," and society are not disparate, but
essentiallv one.

More specifically he implies :

1. No positive religion had the right to claim superiority;

2. Every historical religion has relative, if not absolute, worth ;

3. Every historical religion is the evidence of the Divine in
man ;

4. The doctrines of Satisfaction and Original Sin are inci-
dental ;

5. This world is the " best of worlds."

The elements of Reimarus's doctrines that led to these con-
clusions, may be briefly stated as follows: The orthodox are in-
consistent because they contemn reason, although reason is their
means of demonstrating their religion ; evidence in favor of
revelation fades with each succeeding generation ; no one faith
can be adapted to the varying races ; such a relatively small
number of people ever heard of Christianity that it cannot have
been divinely ordained for all ; there are obvious defects in the
truth of the narrative in the Bible ; the Old Testament does not
contain the most essential principles of revelation, i. e. the doc-
trine of immortality ; the stories of the resurrection are at such
variance that the whole story sounds invented.

Lessing. by no means agrees with Reimarus and takes issue
with him definitely, arriving at such conclusions as:

Faith and reason are disparate; reason, having accepted revela-
tion, is estopped from demanding that revelation be made " in-
telligible;" a revelation, if not for all men. may very properly be
for the guidance of the largest number in the shortest time : the
Old Testament contains a revelation despite the fact that it does
not teach the immortality of the soul or the unity of God ; a
revelation does not have to contain absolute truth.

It is not improbable that something of the notion of the relation
of reason to faith, and of education as a genetic process, Lessing

32 TJic Education of the Human Race

owed to Wieland who, in his essay On the Place of Reason in
Matters of Faith, says :- " It is in the nature of things that a child,
with every added year, comes to be less of a child. It has in it
all that is needed to bring it to maturity, to the perfection of its
individual nature ; and it is wrong for its superiors, from selfish
motives, to hinder its development. If what we call people is a
sort of collective child (a current conception which is not alto-
gether without foundation)^ then must be true of this child what
is true of all children: it must be given every opportunity to
develop into intelligent manhood. What need we fear from
light? What can we hope from darkness? If diseased eyes are
not able to bear the light, well, we must try to heal them and
they will certainly learn how to bear the light."

Here we have what was to appear later as the " Culture Epoch
Theory," made so much of by Ziller and the other disciples of
Herbart, but clearly antedating them. Herder in his Ideen re-
veals the same idea, and Leibniz had it. It accounts for Lessing's
conception of the Jewish race as a race that was in its childhood,
in a stage to be taught by primers and stories, allegories in simple
style and rhythmic repetitions. It gives ground for the assertion
that revelation is still coming, an assertion that, as elsewhere
pointed out, serves to show his relation with Kant and the later
philosophers.*

The spiritual perfection which Lessing believes to be at the
goal of human endeavor, is not to be won without effort. Knots
and gnarls must live on friendly terms, as Nathan says in Act
II, Sc. 5, and palingenesis must be accomplished by steadily in-
creasing improvement. Lessing is thoroughly religious and sin-
cere in this. He feels the covenant of man and the approach of
an eternal gospel. He flourishes in an atmosphere that regards
man as the necessary culmination of the world that will serve to
make the whole a unit.

^ Francke, Social Forces &c. p. 265

' Cf. Hailmann's translation of Froebel's Education of Man, p. 18 n. for
the doctrine in Spencer, Comte, Froebel, Pestalozzi, Richter, Goethe, Kant,
Hegel, Herbart.

* Cf. Buchner's Kant's Educational Theory, p. 58 and 60, for Kant's
contribution to the doctrine of evolution, " racial education."

The Education of the fluman Race 33

2. The Tractate.
TFIE EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE.

1780.

All these things are true in certain people from
the same standpoint from which, in certain other
people, they are false.

Augustinus.

Preface of the Editor.

I made public the first half of this production in my Communi-
cations. I am now ready to have the remainder appear.

The author, m it, has taken his station on a height whence he
believes he sees rather more than the prescribed path of his own
day.

But he summons from the road no hastening traveler who
merely wishes soon to reach his abode for the night. He does
not demand that the prospect that has ravished him should delight
every eye.

And so. permit me to think, he might be allowed to stand and
muse there where he does stand and muse !

H he only have brought out of the immeasurable distance, which
a soft evening glow neither quite encloses nor quite reveals, merely
a hint of that about which I have often been puzzled !^

I.

What education is for the individual, revelation is for the whole
human race.

2.

Education is revelation that aftects the individual : revelation is
education which has affected and still affects the race."

Tor the confusing changes in the point of view th.it occur in this
Preface note the circumstances under which the first half of the Educa-
tion appeared. Cf. ante, Lessing's Life from 1774-1778 and tlie opening.
ante, of Part II. Lessing, in this Preface, is speaking, as an editor of the
" fragment by an unknown hand." He refers to himself, however, here
and there, both in the third person, as author, and in the first person, as

editor. .....

• It is already apparent that the key-note of the tractate is indivtduahsm

34 The Education of the Human Race

3-

Whether to consider education from this point of view, can
be of any value to pedagogical science, I will not now inquire.
But, in theology, the conception of revelation as an education
of the race may be of the utmost value and may serve to remove
many difficulties.

4-

Education gives to man nothing that he could not evolve from
himself, but gives it to him more swiftly and less arduously.
Similarly, revelation gives to the race no things which the un-
aided human reason'^ would not come upon by itself ; but revela-
tion has bestowed and is still bestowing, somewhat earlier, the
most important of these things.

And just as in education, since not everything can be brought
to pass at once, the order of the development of the powers of
man is not a matter of indifference ; so God, in his revelation,
felt constrained to maintain a certain system, a certain modera-
tion.*

and all that that implies. But it is an individualism with social order.

Cf. Nathan, Act I., Sc. 3.

Nathan. Must, dervise? Dervise, must?

Nay, no man must; why must a dervise then.

What must he, prithee?
Dervise. What is desired of him

In faith and honor, and he knows is right —

That, must a dervise.
Nathan. There you speak the truth;

Let me embrace you, man, and call you friend!
Indeed. Nathan feels so strongly opposed to the unreasonable individual-
ism and Rousseauism of Al Hafi, the Dervise, who scorns Saladin's virtue
when it appears contrasted with that monarch's oppression of his fellow-
man in religious wars, that he (Nathan) actually fails to ask Al Hafi of
the whereabouts of the Templar who has just saved from death the child
that the Jew cares more for than for anything else in the world.

'' Cf. the keen irony in the following words of the unreasoning Patri-
arch of Nathan, Act IV, Sc. 2.

Patr. No man indeed should fail to use the reason

That God has given him — in its proper place.

* * * * ** * * *

Who would presume to let his reason question

The absolute authority of Him

Who made that reason — try the eternal law

Of heaven's high majesty by various rules of idle honor?
'Lessing does not disregard the omnipotence of God here. He feels,
merely, that God's design was decidedly not to bestow light all at once
though it was in his power. Man had to work out his salvation. Note
the implication of evolution and self-activity. Cf. too, § 6 post.

The Education of the llnnuin Race 35

6.

Even if the primal man had been immediately endowed with
a conception of a single God, yet this conception, imparted and
not wrought out, could not possibly have endured in its integrity.
As soon as the independent reason began to elaborate it, the
former would subdivide the single infinite into many finites and
give to each of the parts a characteristic mark."

7-

Thus naturally arose polytheism and idolatry. And who knows
for how many million years human reason might have blown
about among these errors — notwithstanding, that everywhere and
always, certain individual men knew that they were errors — if
God had not pleased to give to reason, through a new impulse, a
better direction.^"

8.

But when he no longer could or would reveal himself to the
individual man, he selected for his particular education an indi-
vidual people, and that, the rudest and most barbarous, in order
to begin with it from the beginning."

9-
This was the Hebrew people of whom it is not known in the
least what kind of divine worship they had in Egypt, for such

* Such passages as these show the influence of Leibniz, and suggest the
later development of Fichte, Schelling. Hegel, and Froebel. The inde-
pendence of human reason is insisted on, and its constructive and defini-
tive activity emphasized. It is assisted by God, Cf. 7, but only gradually
and at those times only when it had reached the proper stage.

^° Only man's misconception betrays religions into subtleties and per-
version, indicates Nathan in the celebrated Ring Scene, of Nathan the
Wise. There is a basic unity, an ethical permanence, and we should for-
bear to accuse because we are all searching for truth. Cf. Spinoza's idea
that falsity is merely a " negative conception," and that general notions
are universal since the latter are an infinitude of specific intersecting rnen-
tal images too numerous for the finite mind separately to retain. Since
all " adequate " ideas are true and intersecting there is truth in all " re-
ligions." Note here Francke's statement, Social Forces &c., p. 292, that
all the rings make the owners pleasing to God and man.

" This, like § 5, is no derogation from God's omnipotence but an ex-
planation of how far the human reason, left to itself, might depart from
the true faith and how necessary instruction was. That the time spent
in the effort to work out destiny had not been wasted. Cf. 18-20.

It must be admitted that, here and there, Lessing's attempt to make
history fit his theory is a little forced.

36 The Education of the Human Race

contemned slaves were not allowed to take part in the divine
worship of the Egyptians, and the God of their fathers had be-
come absolutely forgotten by them.

10.

Perhaps it was that the Egyptians had expressly interdicted
from them every god and all gods ; had, in order to be able to
tyrannize over them with a greater show of reasonableness, forced
them to the belief that they might not have either god or gods,
since to have such was a prerogative only of the dominant Egyp-
tians. Do Christians treat their slaves, even now, very differ-
ently ?

II.

To this rude people, accordingly, God caused himself to be
proclaimed merely as the god of their fathers, in order at first to
acquaint them with a god of their own and to inspire them with
confidence.

12.

Through the miracles by which he led them out of Egy^pt and
established them in Canaan, he attested himself directly after-
wards as a god mightier than any other. ^^

13-

And while he continued to manifest himself as the most power-
ful of all^which, of course, only one can be — he accustomed
the people gradually to the conception of a unitary God.

14.

But how far, indeed, was this conception of a unitary God
from the true transcendental conception of a unified God which
reason so much later first learned with certainty to resolve from
the conception of an infinite God.

15-
To the true conception of a unitary God — even if the better part
of the people more or less approached it — the people, as a whole,

" For Lessing's attitude towards miracles, Cf. various sections passim
and § 80 n.

The Educatio)i of the Huuhdi Race 37

however, could not for a long time raise themselves, and this
was the only true reason why they so often abandoned their one
god'and thought to find the One (that is, the mightiest), in some
other god of some other peoples.

16.

But for what kind of moral education was such a rude people,
unaccustomed to abstract thoughts, and so completely childish,
fit? For no other than that suitable to the age of childhood: the
education by means of immediate appeals to the senses through
punishments and rewards.

17-

Hence, here, too, education encounters revelation. Not as yet
could God give to his people any other religion, any other law,
than one through the observance or disregard of which they hoped
or feared here, upon earth, to be happy or unhappy. For their
vision did not penetrate beyond this life. They knew of no im-
mortality of the soul: they yearned for no future life. To have
revealed so early to them those things for which their reason was
so immature — what would that have been in God other than the
mistake of the conceited pedagogue who prefers, instead of firmly
grounding his pupil, to hasten him along and to boast of him.

18.

But, it will be asked, for wOiat purpose was this education of
such a primitive people, a people with whom God was compelled
to begin absolutely from the beginning? I answer: In order,
later on, to be able to use, with greater certainty, as instructors
of all other peoples, several of them. He developed in them the
future teachers of the human race. They were Jews: they must
have been Jews ; they must have been men from a i)eople educated
in that way."

19.

For, when the child had grown up. atiiid bufFetings and en-
dearments, and had arrived at an age of comprehension, the

" Cf . the lesson of Nathan: Toleration sprinpinR from conflict, from
effort that brings self-renunciation. Kimo Fischer, in his essay on Nathan
the Wise, shows by reference to this idea why the hero of Lcssing's dra-
matic poem was a Jew.

38 The Education of the Human Race

Father thrust it at once into foreign parts and there it reaUzed
immediately the benefits it enjoyed but had not recognized in its
Father's house.

20.

While God, through all the degrees of a childhood education
was leading his chosen people, the other nations of the earth made
their way according to the light of reason. Most of them were
left far behind by the chosen people, but some got ahead of it.
This, too, happens in the case of children that are allowed to grow
up by themselves: many remain absolutely rude; others develop
themselves to an astonishing extent.^*

21.

As, however, these more fortunate few prove nothing against
the usefulness and necessity of instruction, so do the few bar-
barous peoples who appeared in their conception of God to have
an advantage up till then over the chosen people, prove nothing
against revelation. The child of education starts with steps that
are slow but sure ; it comes up late with many a more fortunately
organized child of nature but it overtakes it nevertheless and is
thereafter never again overtaken by it.^^

22.

Similarly (the doctrine of the unity of God, which is found
and not found in the books of the Old Testament, being laid
aside), I say, the fact that at least the doctrine of the immor-
tality of the soul and the accompanying doctrine of punishment
and reward in a future life, are not found therein, is just as
little proof against the divine origin of these books. Notwith-
standing this, there may be perfect truth there with all the mi-
racles and prophecies therein. For, let us suppose that these doc-
trines were not only incomplete but that they were not even
true; let us suppose that, for man, everything was over with
this life — would the existence of God be the less demonstrated
thereby ? Would God appear thereby less free ? Would it thereby

" Cf. § 76 n. For other sections that reiterate the part of '" reason "
cf. 35, 36, 2,7, 55, 63, 65 &c.
^» Cf. § 76 «.

The Education of the Human Race 39

be less seemly in God to take charge of the temporal destinies of
some one people of this transitory human race? The miracles
which he performed for the Jews, the prophecies which, through
them, he had chronicled, were by no means merely for the few
mortal Jews in whose time they had happened and had been re-
corded. He had his aims, at the same time, in regard to the
whole Jewish race, the whole human race, which, perhaps, may
remain here upon, earth forever, though every individual Jew,
every individual man, were to perish irredeemably/"

Again. The absence of these doctrines from the writings of the
Old Testament proves nothing against their divinity. Moses,
although the sanction of his law extended only to this life, was
certainly sent from God. Why should it extend farther ? He was
sent only to the Hebrew people, the Hebrew people of that time,
and his mission was perfectly suited to the knowledge, capacities,
and the inclinations of the Hebrew people then living, as well as
to the destiny of the coming race. That is enough.

24.

So far ought Warburton to have gone and no farther. But
the learned man overstrained the bow. Not content that the
absence of these doctrines was no impeachment of the divine mis-
sion of Moses, he sought to evince that mission through that
very absence. If he had only sought to draw his proof from the
appropriateness of such a law (cf. 23) to such a people! But
be sought refuge in a continuous miracle, unbroken from Moses
to Christ, according to which God made every individual Jew
just as happy or unhappy as he was obedient or disobedient to
the law. This miracle was to be regarded as making up the
lack of those doctrines without which no state could endure,
and such compensation, as demonstrating what the omission, at
first sicrht, seemed to gfainsav.

" Spinoza in chapter 2 of the Politico-Theological Tractate points out
how limited the early Jew's idea of God was. Conceptions of omniscience
and omnipresence were of slow growth. Also, note post §§ 85 to 100.

40 The Education of the Human Race

25-
How fortunate it was that Warburton^'' could not verify, could
not make probable, through any means, this persisting miracle
in which he placed the reality of the Jewish theocracy. For had
he been able to do that, then had he really made the difficulty in-
superable— to me at least. For then, that which had been in-
tended to reestablish the divinity of the mission of Moses would
have made that matter doubtful, which God, it is true, did not
intend to communicate, but which, also, he certainly did not in-
tend to make difficult.

26.

My explanation lies in the antitype of revelation.^" A primer
for children may very well pass over in silence this or that im-
portant, element of the science or art that is being set forth,
which element, in the judgment of the teacher is not adapted to
the capacities of the children for whom he wrote. But the primer
must, under no circumstances, contain anything that will divert
the children from, nor obstruct the paths to, the withheld im-
portant elements. Rather must all the avenues be left scrupu-
lously free for them ; and to cause them to be directed from even
a single one of these paths so that they might traverse it later,
would alone serve to transform a defect of the primer into an
actual fault.

27.

Thus the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and future
reward were properly enough left out of the writings of the
Old Testament, the primers of the Israelites, a rude people un-
disciplined in thought. But those writings could under no cir-
cumstances contain anything that might delay in any wise the
people for whom they were written, on the road to this great
truth. And what would have, to say the least, impeded the people
more, than to have that marvelous recompense promised in this
very life, and promised by one who makes no promises that he
does not execute.

" Cf. The amusing and acute analysis of the theories of Warburton,.
" the attorney-general of God," in Leslie Stephen's, History of English
Thought in the Eighteenth Century.

" I. e.. Education.

The Education of the Human Race 41

28.

For, although the unequal distribution of the goods of this
life, in which little attention seems to have been paid to Virtue
and Vice, is not the strongest proof of the immortality of the
soul and a future life in which that lack of discrimination will
be removed, it is nevertheless certain that without that difficulty,
human intelligence, for a long time, possibly never, would not
have arrived at better and more convincing proofs. For what
would have been able to force it to seek these stronger proofs?
Mere curiosity?^"

29.

This or that Israelite, to be sure, might have extended to each
individual member, those divine promises and threats which con-
cerned the political aggregate and might have persisted in the
firm belief that whoever was pious would also be happy, and that
whoever was unhappy was bearing the punishment for his mis-
deeds, which punishment would immediately transmute itself
again into blessing as soon as he abandoned his transgression.
Such a person appears to have written Job for the plan of it is
quite in this spirit.

30.

But it was impossible that daily experience should strengthen
this belief, for, had it done so, all would have been over for ever,
so far as the recognition and acceptance of the still unimparted
truth was concerned, for ever, for the people that had such an
experience. For, if the pious man was absolutely happy, and
in conjunction with his happiness it was necessary that no fright-
ful thoughts of death should interrupt his tranquility, that he
should die old and completely satisfied unth life, how could he
yearn for another life ; how could he reflect upon that for which
he did not yearn? But, if the pious man did not reflect thereon,
who then was to reflect? the transgressor? who felt the penalty

" Lessing is a thoroughgoing disciplinarian here. Difficulties to over-
come is the material of education. The idea is in accord with Lessing's
words as given by Sime in his Life, vol. 2, p. 3-^4 • "' ^^ 't was true that
there was an art that made us acquainted with the future wc should
rather not know it; if it was also true that there was a religion which
put us beyond doubt as to the next life we should rather not listen to
this religion."

42 The Education of the Human Race

of his evil deeds and who, if he execrated this life, gladly re-
nounced that other life?-"

31-
Much less did it matter that here and there an Israelite directly
and explicitly denied the immortality of the soul and future re-
compense because the law did not concern itself therewith. The
denial of an individual — though he were a Solomon — did not
halt the progress of the general understanding and was, in and
for itself, a proof that the nation had taken a great step nearer
the truth. For individuals deny only what the many are be-
ginning to reflect upon, and to reflect upon that which has been
theretofore absolutely ignored is half way to knowledge.

32.

Let us also acknowledge that it is an heroic obedience to ob-
serve the laws of God merely because they are the laws of God^^

^ Lessing's conception of education as a discipline appears in Nathan,
Act I, Sc. I, where Nathan, transcendently educated because he is The
Wise, patiently accepts Daja's accusations, and the loss of his sons, &c.
His gentle reminder, Act I., Sc. 2.,
But have you learned
That pious ecstacies are easier far
Than virtuous deeds
suggests Spinoza's assertion that, as the will has no validity apart from
acts of volition, the will is coterminous with understanding, or is under-
standing in another mode. A view which not only foreshadows the
philosophy of Schopenhauer and the volitional psychology of Dewey, but
may be conceived as basing the practical teaching of Nathan in his plea
for the validity of the religions, Nathan Act III, Sc. 7. The latter are
consanginneous because of the identity of intellect and will that in them
must lie.

Cf. Sime's Life v. I, p. 94. Lessing " over and over again returns to
the principle that conduct, not belief, is the more important thing, and
that mere dogmatic teaching is of no avail if dissociated from practical
goodness."

^ Lessing inclines to the Kantian view that a supersensible God is
demonstrable though not, of course, ex vi termini, knowable, through ex-
perience. Cf. Nathan Act III, Sc. i.

All the more consoling was the lesson
That faith in God depends not on the views
We entertain of him.
Cf. Sime's Life, Vol. i, p. 95, quoting Lessing: "The attempt to put
together a single religion before men have been brought to the sincere
exercise of their duties is an empty fancy."

The whole ground work of Nathan is self-renunciation, the eflfect of
which is heightened by contrast with the self-centered Daja, the grasping
Patriarch and the misconceived democracy of the dervise. Act I, Sc. 3,
Act II, Sc. 9, whom Nathan in Act I, Sc. 3, rallies with :
If your heart continues dervise, why
" The fellow in the state " is but a cloak.

The Education of the Human Race 43

and not because He has here and there promised to reward the
observer of them: to observe them even tliough a future reward
be entirely doubted and an earthly one also is not wholly certain.

33-

A people trained in this heroic obedience towards God, should
it not be destined, should it not be fitted, above all others, to
carry out especial divine plans? Let the soldier who offers blind
obedience to his chief, become convinced also of the sa<:;^acity of
his leader, and say what this leader would not dare, with him,
to undertake.

34-

Yet the Jewish people in their Jehovah had reverenced rather
the mightiest than the wisest of all gods : had feared him as a
jealous god rather than loved him. This is a proof, too, that the
conceptions which they had of their most exalted, unitary god
were not exactly those which we hold for true. But now the
time had arrived when these conceptions of theirs were to be
broadened, ennobled, rectified. To which end, God made use of
a perfectly natural means,-- of a better and more accurate meas-
ure by which the nation secured opportunity to esteem him.

35-
Instead of esteeming him, as till then, only in contrast to the
miserable idols of the small rude neighboring tribes with whom
they lived in constant jealousy, they began, in captivity under
the wise Persians, to estimate him against the being of all beings,
as one recognized and honored by a disciplined reason.-^

Notice the reiteration of the idea of renunciation in all of tlie noble

characters: in the Sultan's pardon of the Templar; in the Templar's

effort to avoid reward ; in Nathan's patience under the loss of sons and

wife. Sittah, more limited, shows it mainly toward her brother. Cf. § 80.

"I. e. Reason, § 35.

"Lessing's attitude toward Reason, in Nathan, appears very clearly
from his contemptuous portrait of the Patriarch who remarks sanctimoni-
ously. Act IV, Sc. 2 :

There the knight may see
How pride of human reason will mislead
In matters spiritual.
And from the words of the Templar. Act IV, Sc. 2, ib:
The girl is trained, 'tis said,
In no religion, rather than his own ;
And has been taught no more nor less of God
Than satisfies her reason.

44 The Education of the Human Race

36.

Revelation had conducted their reason ; and now reason sud-
denly illuminated their revelation.

37-

This was the first mutual service which they performed for
each other. And such a reciprocal influence is, far from being
ill-fitting to the author of them, so appropriate that without it
each of them would have been useless.

38.

The child, sent among strangers, saw other children who knew
more and lived more fittingly, and asked himself abashed : " Why
do I not know that too, why do I not live thus? Ought not
this to have been imparted to me, ought not I to have been re-
strained in my Father's House?" Then he again seeks out his
primer, which long since had become tiresome to him, in order
to cast the blame upon the primer. But behold, he realizes that
the blame does not lie in the books : that the blame of not long
ago knowing this very thing and living this very way, is solely
his own.

39-

As the Jews in their Jehovah by this time recognized, through
the means of the purer, Persian doctrine, not merely the greatest
of all national gods, but God ; as they, so much more readily
could find him and point him out to others as he really was in
their reproduced sacred writings ; as they evinced aversion to all
sensuous representations of this conception, or were advised, at
all events, in these writings to have an aversion just as great as
the Persian had always had — what wonder is it that they found
favor in the eyes of Cyrus with a divine worship which he
recognized, it is true, as being far from pure Sabeism but still
far superior to the gross idolatries which, instead of the newer
conception, had taken possession of the forsaken country of the
Jews.

40.

Thus enlightened in regard to their own unrecognized treasures,
they returned and became an entirely different people, whose

The Education of the Ffuuian Race 45

first care it was to make this eiilij^htennicnt among them, en-
during. Soon apostacy and idolatry were no longer thought of
amongst them. For, though it is i)ossible to be unfaithful to a
national god, to God, when once he has been recognized, never.'-*

41.
The theologians have sought variously to explain this com-
plete change in the Jewish people, and one of them, who has very
well pointed out the inadequacy of all these different explanations,
wished, in conclusion, to advance " the apparent fulfilment of the
written and oral prophecies concerning the Babylonish captivity
and release from it." as the true cause of the change. But this
reason, also, can be the true one only so far as it implies the
now newly exalted conceptions of God. The Jews must now,
for the first time, have learned that to perform miracles and to
prophesy the future belongs only to God. They had formerly
ascribed both of these powers also to the false gods — a policy
which made even miracles and prophecies have upon them a weak
and transient impression.

42.

Without doubt, the Jews, under the Chaldeans and Persians,
became more familiar with the doctrine of the immortality of the
soul. They became more familiar with it in Egypt, in the schools
of the Greek philosophers.

43-

But as this doctrine of immortality did not have the same
status in relation to their sacred writings that it had had with
the doctrine of the unity and attributes of God ; as the former
doctrine was crudely overlooked by this sensual people, though
the latter would be sought; as anticipatory exercises of the latter
were still necessary ; and as only allusions and hints had been
given — belief in the immortality of the soul naturally could never
become the belief of the whole nation. It was. and remained,
the belief of only a certain sect of them.

44-
An anticipatory exercise of the doctrine of the immortality of
the soul, I call, for example, the divine threat to intlict the sins

'*Cf. § 7 «•

46 The Education of the Human Race

of the fathers on his children even to the third and fourth gen-
eration. This accustomed the fathers to hve in thought with
their furthest descendants and to anticipate the misfortune which
they had brought upon these innocent ones.

45.
An allusion, I call that which was designed to excite curiosity
and to occasion a question, such as the frequently reiterated
phrase: to be gathered to his fathers, for die.

46.

A hint, I call that which already contains some germ, out of
which the truth, still withheld, may develop. Of this kind, was
the inference of Christ from the appellation: God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. This hint appears to me certainly capable of
being developed into a convincing proof.

47-
In such anticipations, allusions, and hints, consists the positive
perfection of a primer; just as the negative perfection consists
in the property, previously pointed out, of not obstructing or
making more difficult the path to the truths not yet imparted.

48.

Add to this, moreover, the dress and the style^^ —
(i. The dress, in allegories and instructive single instances, of
the abstract truths which were not, too cursorily, to be passed
over, and were told as if they had actually happened. Of this
nature are : the creation, in the picture of an increasing day ; the
origin of moral evil, in the story of the forbidden tree; the source
of many tongues, in the history of the tower of Babel, etc.

49.

2. The style, sometimes plain and simple, sometimes poetical,
always full of tautologies, but the style of those that think
shrewdly and while they at one time appear to say something
else, are really saying the same thing ; at another time appear to

" § 50 completes the sentence.

The Education of tJie Huwan Race 47

say the same thing though really they imply, or can be under-
stood as implying, something else.)

50-

And you have all the meritorious attributes of a primer, for
children as well as for a childlike nation.

51-

But each primer is only for a certain age. To delay over it
longer than was the intention, the child that has outgrown it, is
pernicious. For, in order to do this in a way anywise profitable,
more must be put into it than is in it ; more must be taken out of it
than it can contain. The allusions and hints must be too much
sought and fondled ; the allegories must be rattled empty ; the il-
lustrations interpreted too straitly. This gives the child a narrow,
skewed, meticulous understanding; it makes him full of mystery,
superstitions, full of contempt for all that is comprehensible and
easy.

52.

The very way-" in which the Rabbins treated their sacred
books: the very character which they imparted to the spirit of
their people!

53-

A- better teacher must come and snatch from the child's hands
the spent primer. Christ came.

54.

That part of the human race which God had willed to compre-
hend in one plan of education (he had, however, willed to unite
in such a plan only that part which, through language and mode
of action, through government and other natural and political
relationships, had already united itself), was ready for the second
great step of education.

55-

That is, this part of the human race had gone so far in the
exercise of its reason that it required and could utilize for its

'I. e., This (§ 51) was the very way, etc.

48 The Education of the Human Race

moral actions, motives nobler and worthier than were the tem-
poral rewards and punishments that had hitherto been its in-
centives. The child had become a boy. .Tid-bits and toys gave
way to the growing desire to become just as free, just as hon-
ored, just as happy as he saw his elder brethren were.

56.

The better ones of that part^" had long since been accustomed
to let themselves be governed by a shadozv of such nobler mo-
tives. In order to be perpetuated after this life, merely in the
recollection of their fellow townsmen, the Greeks and Romans
did everything.

57-
It was time that another, true life after this life, should win an
influence over his^^ actions.

58.

And so Christ became the first trustworthy, practical teacher of
the immortality of the soul.

59-
The first trustworthy teacher — trustworthy through the prophe-
cies that appeared fulfilled in him ; trustworthy in the miracles
which he performed ; trustworthy through his own reanimation
after a death by which he had sealed his doctrines. Whether we
now can prove this resurrection or these miracles, I shall ignore
as I shall ignore who the person of this Christ was. All that
might have been of importance at that time in the acceptance
of his doctrines, is no longer of importance in the recognition of
their truth.

60.

The first practical teacher — for it is one thing to surmise, wish
for, and believe in the immortality of the soul as a philosophic
speculation ; another, to formulate, in accord therewith, the in-
ner and outer acts.

^ I. e. the elder brethren.
"* I. e. the youth's.

The Education of the Ihimau Race 49

61.

And this at least Christ taught now for the first time. For,
although among many nations the hclief had already been intro-
duced before him, that evil actions would yet be punished in that
life, they were, nevertheless, only such actions as wrought injury
to the civil community, and therefore already had their punish-
ment in the civil community. To recommend an inner purity of
heart with regard to another life was reserved alone to him.

62.

His disciples have faithfully propagated these doctrines. And
had the former no other merit than that of procuring a more
general circulation among many peoples of a truth which Christ
appeared to have intended for the Jews alone, they ought, for
that very reason, to be considered among the fostering bene-
factors of the human race.

63-

How could it have been otherwise than that they should con-
fuse this one great doctrine with other doctrines whose truth was
less illuminating, whose use was less important. Let us not
blame them for that, but rather earnestly inquire whether these
very intermingled doctrines did not become a new directing im-
pulse to human reason.

64.

At all events, it is evident that the New Testament scriptures
in which these doctrines were, after some time, preserved, pro-
vided and still provide the second, better primer for the human
race.

65.

They, more than all other books, during the last seventeen
hundred years, have exercised the human reason ; more than all
other books, have illumined it ; were it, only through the light
which the human intellect carried into them.

66.

It would have been impossible for any other book to have be-
come so generally known among such different peoples. And it

50 The Education of the Human Race

is incontestable that the human reason has been more advanced by
the fact that such totally unlike modes of thought have exer-
cised themselves on this very book, than if each nation, for itself
particularly, had had its own primer.

67.

It was also most necessary that each nation sliould accept this
book for some time, as the ne plus ultra of its knowledge. For in
that way must the boy also first regard his primer, so that the
impatience merely to be finished may not urge him on to things
for which he has not yet laid the foundation.

68.

And, what is still most necessary — take heed, thou better pre-
pared one, thou that pausest restlessly, to fume on the last page
of this primer, take heed against letting thy weaker fellow-pupil
mark what thou faintly perceivest, or already beginnest to see.

69.

Until they are up with thee, these w-eaker fellow-pupils, rather
turn thyself once more to this primer and seek whether that
which thou takest only for involution of method, or a temporary
expedient in the teaching, is really not something more.

70.

Thou hast seen, in the childhood of the human race, in regard
to the doctrine of the unity of God, that God immediately re-
vealed, or permitted and brought out, mere truths of reason ;
that mere truths of reason were for some time taught as imme-
diately revealed truths, in order to disseminate them more rapidly
and to establish them more firmly.

71.

Thou experiencest the same thing in the boyhood of the human
race in the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The latter, in
the second, better primer, is preached as revelation, not taught
as the result of human conclusions.

The Education of the II u man Race 5 1

72.

Just as we can henceforth do without the Old Testament in
the doctrine of the unity of God, so, by degrees, we begin to be
able to do without the New Testament in the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul. Could there not be foreshadowed, in
this New Testament, other similar truths which we are to regard
in astonishment until they learn to induct reason from her other
evidenced truths and with them to combine?

73-
For example, the doctrine of the Trinity. What if this doctrine,
after endless wanderings to and fro, should only bring the human
understanding finally to recognize that God cannot possibly be one
in the sense in which finite things are one; that his unity must be a
kind of transcendental unity which does not exclude a kind of
plurality. At all events, must not God have of himself the most
complete conception ; that is, a conception in which there is
everything that is in him? Should there, however, be everything
that is in him if there was, of his essential reality, as well as of
his other attributes, merely a conception, merely a possibility?
This possibility exhausts the nature of his other attributes, but
does it do so for his essential reality ? I think not. Accordingly,
God can have either no possibly complete conception of himself,
or this complete conception is just as essentially real as he is him-
self. Certainly, my image in the mirror is nothing but a mere
representation of me because it has of me only that from which
rays of light fall upon its surface. But if this picture had ez'ery-
thin^^, everything without exception, which I myself have, would
it then be still an empty representation, or rather a true dupli-
cate of my personality? If I believe I recognize a similar dupli-
cation in God, my error may not be as great as my words are
feeble, in the expression of my ideas. And so much remains un-
deniable; that they that wished to make the notion of this con-
ception popular, could hardly have expressed themselves more
aptly or more comprehensibly than by the appellation of a Son
whom God created from eternitv.

52 The Education of the Human Race

74-
And the doctrine of original sin. What if everything finally
persuaded us that man, when on the first and loivest round of
his humanity, is by no means such master of his actions as to be
able to follow moral laws.

75-
And the doctrine of the Son's Satisfaction. What if every-
thing finally compelled us to suppose that God, despite that
original inability of man, nevertheless preferred to give him
moral laws, and preferred to forgive him all trespasses in con-
sideration of his Son (that is, in view of the self-subsisting com-
pleteness of all His perfections contrasted with which and in
which each imperfection of the individual disappears), than not
to give him those laws and exclude him from all moral blessed-
ness which, without moral laws, cannot be conceived.

76.

It is not to be objected that such subtleties over the mysteries
of religion are interdicted. The word " mystery " connoted in
the early days of Christianity, something quite different from
what we now understand by it. And the development of re-
vealed truths into truths of reason is absolutely necessary if the
human race is to be helped by them. When they were revealed,
they were, indeed, no truths of reason ; but they were revealed in
order to become so. They were like the Facit which the arith-
metic master cries to his pupils so that they may in some wise
be able to direct themselves in calculation. Were the pupils to
content themselves with the announced Facit they would never
learn to calculate, and the aim with which the good master gave
them a clue for their work, would be defeated.-®

^* The cultivation of revealed truths with truths of reason is thus de-
clared to be absolutely necessary. In Nathan, Lessing implies that too
much weight is given by Christians to formulas and not enough to ideas.
Thus Sittah says. Act II, So. i, after the chess game.
The name (Christianity) is all their pride.
And Al Hafi in Act II, Sc. 9, says, in his over-wrought zeal :
Who cannot resolve
Upon the instant for himself to live,
Remains forevermore the slave of others.

The Education of the Iluiiiati Race 53

77-
And why should we not also be able to be conducted by a
religion (notwithstanding that its historical truth, if you will,
appears so doubtful), to more exact and better conceptions'" of
the divine Being, of our nature, of our relations to God — con-
ceptions to which the human reason would, of itself, never have
arrived.

It is not true that speculations on these things ever caused
harm and became noxious to the civil community. This reproach
is not to be made to speculations but to the ignorance, to the
tryanny that restrained these speculations, that did not permit
original speculations to men that had them.'^

79-

Such speculations — let them turn out as they will individually
— are as a general thing, on the contrary, incontestibly the most
appropriate exercises of the human understanding so long as the
human heart is, in general, capable at best of loving virtue only
on account of its eternal blessed consequences.'^

80.

For, moreover, in this selfish state of the human heart, to
incline to exercise the understanding only on those things which

*• I. e., The Trinity, Original Sin, and the Son's Satisfaction, and per-
haps what Edward Caird refers to in his Social Philosophy and Religion
of Cointc when he says in his Preface, quoting Conite, " The individual
man is a mere abstraction and there is nothing real but humanity," add-
ing, "The same change (of the point of view) brings with it a restora-
tion of religion. The 'objective' or absolute God, the God who made
all things work together for good to His creatures, has disappeared with
the fictions of childhood. But his place has been taken by Humanity
conceived as a great providential existence which sustains and controls
the life of the individual man and in which he finds a sufficient object
for all his devotions."

'"■ Cf. for toleration and individualism, §§ 80 and 87 and the very thesis
of Spinoza's Tractatus Thcologico Poliiicus, that freedom of thought
should be granted and may not be withheld without danger. Cf. too.
ante, note to Voltaire's words, quoting Royce.

""I.e. Such speculations would not be necessary if the human heart
loved virtue for its own sake. But with the human heart benighted as
it is, we must speculate beyond mere corporal needs. Cf. § 80.

54 The Education of the Human Race

concern corporeal needs, would blunt it rather than whet it. It
jx)sitively will be exercised on spiritual concerns if it is to attain
to complete clarification and bring out that purity of heart which
qualifies us to love virtue for its own sake.''^

8i.

Or shall the human race never reach this acme of clarification
and purity? Never?

82.

Never ? Let me not, All-Bountiful, think such blasphemy ! Ed-
ucation has its goal, not less for the race than for the individual.
What is to be educated, is to be educated for something.

83.

The flattering prospects which are revealed to the youth, the
honor, the well-being, which are held glittering before him —
what are they but means to educate him to become a man who,
when these prospects of honor and well-being fade away, may
be capable, even then, of doing his duty.^*

84.
Human education aims at that, and shall divine education not
stretch so far? What art succeeds in doing for the individual,

** Cf. ■§§ 32, 83. Nathan, Act I, Sc. 9, pleads for the immanent spirit
in the real, when he replies to Recha's inquiry as to whether he has not
taught her to believe in God and miracles :
Yes,
And he loves you ; and hourly, miracles
For you and such as you, is working now —
From all eternity, has worked them for you.
For further indications of Spinozistic immanentalism Cf. Act I, Sc. 2 :
For God rewards even here
The good that here is done,
and Act III, Sc. 2:

Where e'er he (Moses) stood, 'twas in God's presence.

The reference to Spinoza is Chapter I. Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.

Note, too, Kant's words : " Mankind must not remain in this raw

state, but must develop, progressing in the direction of reason, law,

will, freedom, morality." Buchner's Educational Theory of Emanuel Kant,

p. 60.

And Cf. Wieland's essay On the Place of Reason in Matters of Faith
quoted by Francke in Social Forces Src, p. 265.

"The reiteration of this idea (§§ 32, 80) suggests the categorical im-
perative, action, and will to do, of Kant's teaching.

The Education of the Human Race 55

shall nature not succeed in doing for the whole? Blasphemy!
Blasphemy !

85-
No! It will conic, it will surely come, the time of perfection,
when man — the more convinced his understanding feels of an ever
better future — will not, however, have to borrow from this future,
motives for his actions ; when he will do the good because it is the
good and not because there were imposed upon it arbitrary re-
wards which were earlier intended merely to steady his incon-
stant vision and strengthen it to recognize the inner, better re-
wards.^^

86.

It will surely come, the time of a iiezv, eternal gospel which is
promised, in the primers of the New Covenant, to us.

87.

It may be that even certain visionaries of the thirteenth and
fourteenth century had caught the gleam of this new, eternal
gospel and erred only in announcing its dawn as so near.-'"

88.

Perhaps their threefold age of the world was no mere empty
vagary, and certainly they had no evil aim when they taught
that the New Covenant must become just as antiquated as the
Old. There remained even with them always the same economy
of the same God, always — to let them use my phrase — the same
plan for the universal education of the human race.

89.

But they were too hasty in that they thought they could make
their contemporaries, who had hardly outgrown childhood, with-

** Cf. the buoyancy of this with Nathan's words, Act II. Sc. 5.
I know a good man's motives, and I know
Good men are everywhere.
" Cf. Royce, "Jesus, advancing on the Stoics, placed the basis in the
kinship of man as sons of God. Thus morality is not dependent on a
fiat of God but on a necessary relation of God's creatures to God. Love
is the basis." Religious Aspect of Philosophy: Search for a Moral Ideal,
p. 39.

And note the dialogue of Nathan and the Templar, .\c\. II, Sc. 5, where
Nathan says :

Knots and gnarls must live on friendly terms.

S6 The Education of the Human Race

out enlightenment, without preparation, at one stroke, men,
worthy of their third age!

90.

And this very thing made them visionaries. The visionary
often projects very true glances into the future; but he cannot
wait for this future. He wishes this future expedited, and ex-
pedited through him ; that for which nature takes milleniums is
to mature in the instant of his life. What will he have of it if
that which he recognizes as the better does not become the better
in his life time? Does he return? Does he think he will return?
Wonderful only that this ecstacy amongst visionaries does not
become more the custom.

91.

Pursue thy secret path, everlasting Providence, only let me
not. because thou art hidden, despair of thee. Let me not despair
of thee even if thy steps appear to me to retreat. It is not true
that the shortest line is always straight.

92.

Thou hast upon thine eternal way so huge a burden, thou
hast so many asides to take ! What if it were as good as proved
that the great, slow wheel which brings the race nearer its per-
fection, received its motion only from smaller, swifter wheels of
which each furnishes its individual share.

93-

It cannot be otherwise ! The very path upon which the race
has attained its perfection sooner or later every individual man
must have travelled. " To have travelled in one and the same
life? Can he have been in the self-same life a sensual Jew and
a spiritual Christian? Can he have accomplished both in the
very same existence ?"^^

^ Note the suggestion of the culture epochs. But Lessing's conception
of a cyclic generation, unlike Bolingbroke's of his own time or the
Heraclitean notion of flux, drove him to a notion of continual betterment.
a palingenesis ending in perfection. Because of the element of revelation
he cannot allow so much genius to the race as does Herder. But Cf.
76 n.

TIic Education of the Ilniiian Race 57

94.

Not, indeed, that! But why could not each individual man
have been existent on this earth more than once?

95-
Is this hypothesis therefore so absurd because it is the oldest,
because the human undcrstandinij^. ere enfeebled and scattered
by sophistry, immediately hit upon it?

96.

Why may not even / have already taken here all the steps
toward my perfection which mere temporal punishments and
rewards can make for men, and (97) why not, at another time,
take all those which the prospects of everlasting rewards help
us so powerfully to make?

98.

Why may I not return as often as I am fit to acquire new
knowledge, new skill? Do I bring away so much at once that
there is not wherewith to recompense the burden of return?

99.

Is the reason that, or is it because I forget that I have already
been here? (Well for me I do forget that! The memory of my
earlier condition would permit me to make but a pernicious use
of the present one. But what I jnnst forget now. have I for-
gotten forever?)

100.

Or is it because too much time would thus for me be lost?
Lost? And what have I to lose? Is not mine a whole eternity?'"'

'^ Cf. "In education lies the great secret uf the perfectinp of human
nature * * *. it is delightful to reflect that human nature will always
be growing better through education and that this can he reduced to a
form that is adapted to mankind. This opens up to us the prospect of
the future happiness of the human race." Kant. Uher FaJagonik,
Samvitlichc IVcrke. T. 9 S. 37.- Quoted by Lester F. Ward in Aftlu'd
Sociology Ch. X. Education as Opportunity.

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